


I Cry Your Name in the Night

by Sunshinebunnie



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Cock and Ball Torment, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fingering, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of canonical violence, Mild CBT, Mild Knifeplay, Redemption, Semi-Clothed Sex, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Smut, True or Dare, mentions of canonical drug use, mentions of underage drinking (depending on jurisdiction), southside, southside serpents, use the buddy system ladies!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 22:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20535362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshinebunnie/pseuds/Sunshinebunnie
Summary: 20 year Jellybean Jones gets a Facebook friend request from a ghost from her past--Kurtz--who's looking to make amends for the sins of his past. With a little encouragement from her college roommate, Gracie, and memories of FP's own efforts at redemption, Jellybean agrees to meet only to find that the devil she once knew is now a different man.  Between trying to atone for past mistakes and a snowstorm that forces them into sharing a bed, sparks eventually fly.....**Originally inspired by a daily prompt from the Southside Archive Discord**





	I Cry Your Name in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> First--thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time to read this! You are so amazingly wonderful!! Thank you for taking a chance on this.
> 
> Second--TRIGGER WARNING: there are several non-graphic references to Ricky getting stabbed (HE LIVES!), and to Kurtz and Joaquin's canonical drug use. If either of these are triggers for you, PLEASE CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.
> 
> Third--per usual, this is unbeta'd. All errors and omissions are my own.
> 
> Finally--if you wants, come finds me on the Tumblr! @sunshinebunnie. I promise I'm friendly! 😊😊😊

All the lights were out at the address she’d scribbled down when he called as she cut the engine on the busted up Chevy Impala SS she’d been restoring for the past several years. The street name hadn’t rung any bells, but as she’d slowly cruised up the out-of-the-way stretch of asphalt, she had a vague memory of having been there many years earlier with a boy named Ricky. 

Jellybean hadn’t seen him in  _ years _ , and had been more than a little surprised when he’d reached out on Facebook looking to reconnect. The friend request sat in her inbox for weeks as she’d prepared for finals unsure of why he’d looked her up, or what he could possibly have to say to her. It was only after she’d finished her last final (Thermodynamics with Professor “Hardass” Hargreave) and was having a well-earned celebratory drink with her roommate that her mind drifted back to the pending notification. 

“Any big plans for winter break, JB?” Gracie asked as she set down her blue Solo cup next to the wireless Bluetooth speaker she’d built for her Circuits final. 

She swallowed the last of her Jack and root beer as she shook her head. “Nah. Told my Dad I’d come stay with him for Christmas, spend some time with my brother and my sister-in-law while I’m up there. Other than that, I’m just planning to drink a shitload of coffee and try working on my car. Maybe try to get ahead on some of my O-chem reading for next semester.”

Gracie nodded. “Sounds like a good time,” she said a little sarcastically. “I’m planning to hook up with as many guys as I can when I get home. I need to have something to keep me going through the inevitable dry spell between the second week of school and Spring Break,” she added with a cheeky grin.

JB laughed so hard at her roommate’s antics she started snorting, which set her off in a further fit of hysterics. She looked over at the flask propped against their window sill and debated for a moment whether she wanted a refill. Her mind drifted unbidden to the request she’d been actively ignoring since before Thanksgiving. More alcohol was  _ definitely _ needed if she was going to talk about  _ that _ . 

Grabbing the flask, she waved it generally in Gracie’s direction to see if she wanted a top off, but her friend shook her head ‘no.’ “Actually,” JB started to say tentatively, “there is something I wanted to get your advice on.” Her roommate instantly straightened up. One of the things Gracie had admired about Jellybean Jones--going back to when they paired up as lab partners for Chem 101 Freshman year--was how cocksure she was about  _ everything _ . For her to be seeking input about something--let alone admitting to wanting advice--was monumental. 

“Go on,” the promising electrical engineering student prompted.

Jellybean took a deep drink from her own Solo cup to steady her nerves before asking, “Have you ever had a person from your past try to friend you on Facebook?”

Gracie stared at her. Out of all the things she’d imagined possibly coming out of her friend’s mouth, not only had that not even remotely been on her radar, it was probably one of the most underwhelming things JB had ever said to her. “A _friend_ _request_?” she parroted incredulously. “_That’s_ what you wanted advice about?”

JB stared at the wall behind her friend as she shrugged awkwardly. “It’s...complicated,” she said, hating that she found herself falling back on the stupid cliché. She could feel Gracie’s eyes boring into the side of her head, and she let out a deep sigh before continuing. “It’s this guy. He was in my brother’s class in high school. They didn’t have the best relationship. Jug was pretty straight edge about a lot of stuff, especially because of our dad, and Kurtz...wasn’t. It caused a lot of drama their junior year, and some of that kinda fell on me.”

Her roommate’s pale grey eyes studied her intently until she cautiously asked, “Fell on you  _ how _ ?”

When she’d asked for advice, this was the part JB knew she’d have to talk about as much as it killed her. “There was a boy in eighth grade with me named Ricky. His older brother went to school with Jug and Kurtz, and he got into debt with Kurtz’s gang. Jug had just done something or other to piss Kurtz off, so he’d told Joaquin that he’d forgive his whole debt if Ricky would bring me to this house party he was hosting,” she said, pausing for a minute before getting to the difficult part of the story. “Ricky made the party sound so cool, and things hadn’t been great at home between my parents, and my brother was being an overprotective dick, and I was thirteen and thought I knew everything, so I went. Well, long story short, my brother found out that Kurtz was hoping Ricky and some of Kurtz’s fellow Gargoyles could introduce me to Jingle Jangle, so he crashed the party with a bunch of Serpents and some of his other friends. It got ugly. Ricky got stabbed. I managed to wind up locked in a cupboard for several hours. Kurtz got sent to Juvie along with a couple of my brother’s best friends.”

“Holy shit,” Gracie breathed out.

Jellybean shrugged. “Pretty much,” she agreed.

Her roommate leaned back heavily against the industrial white cinderblock wall of their dorm, holding the rim of the plastic cup precariously between her teeth as she contemplated JB’s story. “Was there any kind of message from him?” she eventually asked, “Or was it just the friend request?”

The brown-haired young woman pulled out her phone and opened the app. After swiping through a few different screens, she said, “I think it’s just the friend request.”

Her friend leaned over from where she was sitting and pulled the phone out of her hand. She pinched her fingers apart to expand Kurtz’s profile picture, taking her time studying it. Every so often, a small hum of approval would slip through her lips as she’d nod her head. Eventually, she pressed the home button to close out of the app and handed back the phone. “Not bad looking,” the emerald-haired girl said, “I’d probably do him.” 

JB let out an involuntary, indignant squeak. “Ugh! Gracie!” she shuddered, “Really?! So not why I was asking you for advice!”

Gracie shrugged unapologetically. “It’s been, what, six? Seven? Years since you last saw this guy, right?” she asked to which Jellybean nodded. “That’s a long time,” she said, “Maybe he found Jesus and wants to make amends. Or maybe he thinks it’s been so long that you just forgot about his party. Maybe he just got Facebook and decided to let the app find “friends” for him based on mutual connections and he doesn’t even know he sent you a friend request,” she said reasonably. “At the end of the day though, JB, you have to decide for yourself,” Gracie paused for dramatic effect, “is this someone you want cluttering up your timeline with dorky memes about motivation and YouTube videos of grunge bands you know he’s never seen in concert?” 

Jellybean laughed so hard a stream of Jack and root beer came shooting out her nose.

She’d stared at the friend request for hours after Gracie had finally passed out on top of her comforter snoring contently in the most uncomfortable position JB had ever seen. Her finger was hovering precariously over the “Delete Request” button when she suddenly found herself thinking about her dad. JB had no illusions about either of her parents. However, while Gladys had decided to go full bandit queen, FP had spent the past several years getting his life in order after one of his childhood best friends died young unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart condition. It had been a struggle for him early on because he’d spent most of his life burning bridges all over Riverdale; however, a few people had chosen to take a risk on him and he’d never let them down because of it. Eventually, a few more people offered him a chance until he’d found himself in the stablest position he’d been in in his entire life. 

Gracie was right--it  _ had _ been a long time since that party, and everyone she knew had matured a lot since then. Who was she to assume he  _ hadn’t _ ? She unconsciously held her breath as she hit the “Confirm” button, a small part of her secretly expecting her phone to suddenly combust in her hand. When she was simply directed back to her timeline, she almost felt disappointed that nothing more dramatic happened after the way she’d stressed out about it. With the hard part over, she’d shoved her phone under her pillow and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

JB had been home in Riverdale for over a week when Kurtz reached out to her over Messenger with a simple “Hey.” She’d been so shocked by the unexpected message notification that she nearly dropped her phone into the cup of coffee she’d been hovering over. Luckily for her, Betty had developed eerily quick reflexes since she and Jughead had their first baby, and had pushed the coffee cup just far enough to the side that the phone clattered harmlessly on to the table instead. Jellybean had given her sister-in-law a sheepish look of thanks before hastily turning the phone face down on the table and inhaling the rest of her black coffee. 

Betty’s parents had been going through an ugly divorce when things between Kurtz and Jughead were at their worst, so JB didn’t know how much of the story she knew already. Given that Betty and Jughead shared a practically preternatural connection though, she didn’t want to risk her brother finding out she was talking to his old archnemesis before she knew what Kurtz wanted. If that meant coming off a little rude in the short term, so be it. When the last drop of coffee in her cup was nothing more than a distant memory, Jellybean grabbed her phone and stood up from the comfortable dining room table. “Hey, can you let my brother know I’ll have to catch him later? It looks like I got a possible line on a replacement part that I’ve been trying to track down for months now,” she said quickly, the lie passing through her lips much more readily than she cared to admit. Betty gave her the type of understanding smile only a fellow gearhead could appreciate as she said, “Sure thing!” to JB’s back as she’d made her way toward their front door.

Once she was outside and safely within the confines of her car, she’d opened Messenger back up and found a short series of messages from Kurtz thanking her for accepting his friend request, then asking if she was in town for Christmas, and would she be willing to meet up to make amends. She drove around aimlessly for what felt like hours as she mulled over his series of messages. Their tone seemed sincere enough, and she hadn’t found any recent negative news about him when she’d Googled his name. 

JB pulled up his Facebook profile. It wasn’t quite the douche-bro aesthetic Gracie’s words had prepared her for. Kurtz did post the odd meme, but they were usually sarcastic  _ de _ motivators or blurbs from obscure underground webcomics, rather than artificially cheery photos with famous (probably made-up) quotes transposed over them. He also seemed to post snippets of poetry, which she found unexpected. Most of the time, he quoted the sources--Sappho, Yeats, and Ginsberg seemed to be his biggest go-to poets--but every so often, he posted a line or two of unattributed work, and she got the oddest feeling it was his own. From what she could tell, nothing about his online presence suggested that he was still the psychotic, drug-addicted boy she remembered from her youth. 

It was nearly dinner by the time she eventually messaged him back with a simple, “Time & place?”

* * *

She’d been happy that he suggested meeting up the Saturday after Christmas. FP had arranged to work a post-Christmas Toys for Tots-style collection drive to benefit a few of the underprivileged daycares on the Southside, while Jughead and Betty had decided to take the baby up to New England for the weekend to spend some time with Cheryl and her wife, Toni, up at the Blossom Family’s winter getaway. 

On the off chance she’d been wrong about him, Jellybean had scribbled down the address Kurtz gave her on the back of an old bill envelope (thank God FP refused to adopt online billpay!), and left it next to the coffee maker, guaranteeing FP would see it if she didn’t make it home that night. Then, because the mechanical engineer in her abhorred the idea of not having a redundancy plan, she’d texted Gracie: ‘Meeting up with Kurtz tonight. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow afternoon, call my dad. Tell him everything!’ Then, she’d followed the text by sharing FP’s contact card. 

Her phone rang within minutes, Gracie’s preferred holiday ringtone (“Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”) echoing tinnily in the trailer’s small kitchenette. JB had barely hit the green “Answer Call” button on her phone when her roommate’s imperious voice came through the speaker: “ _ Speak. _ ” The brunette rolled her eyes even though she knew her friend couldn’t see it; sometimes the petty rebellions of life helped stopped her from doing far more drastic things. “You need to work on your phone etiquette,” JB sbarkef back good-naturedly earning a scoff from her best friend. 

“You’re meeting up at night with the hot friend-requesting psycho. What type of introduction do you realistically need me to provide as to why I called you?” Gracie japed. 

JB rolled her eyes again even as she replied, “Not the point, Gracie.” 

Her friend let out an annoyed huff before she said poutily, “ _ Fine _ . Hey JB! Just saw your text. What’s the deal with you and  _ hot friend-requesting psycho _ ? Better?” 

She stifled the laugh that wanted to escape in response to Gracie’s antics. JB knew from experience that if she made the mistake of antagonizing her friend, she would eventually have her revenge, and usually at the absolutely least opportune moment. Instead, she simply replied, “He messaged me a few days before Christmas. Asked if I was in town. Looks like he’s working his steps and trying to make amends with people, so he wanted to see if I felt comfortable enough meeting him in person.”

There was a thoughtful pause on the other end of the line, and JB almost thought Gracie had hung up in disgust at how mundane the whole thing turned out to be. However, before long, the other woman’s voice piped up, “So what are you wearing?”

JB honestly hadn’t given thought to wearing any type of “special” outfit to meet up with Kurtz. It wasn’t a date after all. She looked down at what she’d put on earlier that day. Everything was clean...ish. The denim coveralls she had on were only on Day 2 of their wear rotation, so they were practically unworn as far as she was concerned. Under the coveralls, she was wearing the t-shirt she and Gracie won by building the best electric boxcar for the school of engineering’s annual boxcar derby charity fundraiser. There appeared to be a small stain on it from where a bit of toothpaste drool had landed when she’d brushed her teeth after breakfast, and she cringed a little. She didn’t realize how long she’d been contemplating her outfit until Gracie’s voice came through over the speaker in an uncanny impression of Wallace Shawn as she said, “Well? I’m waiting!” 

Letting out a small sigh, she admitted, “A pair of overalls and our boxcar derby championship t-shirt?” 

Gracie’s response was immediate and unequivocal: “No. Try again.”

“It’s  _ not _ a date, Gracie,” JB tried cajoling. “What I’m wearing is irrelevant.”

At the sharp huff of exhaled air she heard through the phone, JB could perfectly envision her roommate--head bent, tightly pinching the bridge of her nose, forehead scrunched up like she was struggling how to explain something she found obvious to a moron. “JB,” Gracie started patiently, “I know this may come as a shock to you, but,” she paused to ensure she had her complete attention before enunciating each of her next words extra carefully, “men...react...differently...to women...they...want...to... _ fuck _ . Nicer. More accommodating. They let their guard down more easily. I’m not asking you because I’m trying to be glib. I’m asking because it could legitimately be a matter of your safety.” 

It was JB’s turn to fall silent. Eventually, Gracie said, “Ok, tell you what. You’re going to go change into that cute pair of skinny jeans you got for your birthday, and put on that black ribbed long-sleeved sweater with the boat neck collar. Oooh! And make sure you’re wearing one of your black or red bras!”

Gracie’s suggestion ( _ command _ ) about what lingerie she should wear to her meeting with Kurtz finally broke through her temporary stupor. “If I wear that sweater, he’ll be able to see my bra straps,” she countered.

“Exactly!” her friend said triumphantly, “It’ll distract him. Especially if you wear one of your red ones. Remember, you want to have as much control over this situation as possible. Men are less evolved creatures than we are, so they’re much easier to manipulate.”

JB couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped that time as she said, “God, Gracie, you sound like you’re channeling my mom right now.” 

There was a faint tinkling of metal that JB recognized as Gracie’s ever-present collection of silver bangle bracelets that let her know she’d flipped back her hair as she chirped, “Smart woman.” 

Jellybean sighed. “If I agree to this will you promise to call my dad if you don’t hear from me?” she finally concede a little tiredly.

She could hear more jingling metal as Gracie replied in an overly serious voice, “Cross my heart and hope you won’t die.”

JB took one more look down at her outfit and sighed heavily once again. “ _ Fine _ ,” she said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Just as the call died, she heard her best friend rush out, “Picsoritdidn’thappen!”

* * *

Her Converse slipped a little on the light dusting of snow covering the concrete walkway up to the front steps of the house, and her arms automatically shot out to keep her balance. As she righted herself, she glanced up only to see several lights illuminating the previously darkened front of the house, and she realized that he must’ve been watching her from the dark. The thought that he was spying on her made her feel more uneasy about her decision until she suddenly saw the front door swing open and Kurtz slowly jogged down the steps to greet her as he simultaneously finished wrapping an overly large black knit scarf around his neck. 

“Um,” the young man started to say as he reached for her elbow to steady her. 

Even though she’d seen his profile picture, it was dark and slightly on the blurry side, and there weren’t many other pictures of him tagged to his profile, so while she had a  _ general _ idea of what he looked like now, his appearance still caught her a little off guard. The last time she’d seen him in person, he’d been strung out on Fizzle Rocks, greasy hair hanging so far into his eyes he’d reminded her of Cousin It, with an almost painful thinness to him that only accentuated the way his black clothes tended to swallow him. In contrast, she found Gracie’s unbidden voice whispering unhelpfully in the back of her mind, ‘ _ I’d probably do him _ ,’ as she took stock of the man Kurtz had become. Gone were the chaotic eyes influenced by the narcotics, replaced instead by a pair of clear, brown eyes looking at her with a surprising amount of concern. The shaggy unwashed grease-mop that formerly constituted his hair was still a little on the shaggy side, but now had a softness to it from being washed that invited her to push his artfully razorbladed bangs out of his face. JB found her eyes drifting down to his chest as he continued to crowd a little near her--hovering--trying to assure himself she was ok. She noted that although he was still thin, he now seemed to have the lithe trimness often found in runners, rather than the emaciated look of someone who couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Taken together, JB had to admit, Kurtz had turned into quite a piece of eye candy. 

“Should’ve worn my duck boots,” she eventually said, trying for levity in an attempt to lighten the sudden tension that seemed to arise between them.

Kurtz laughed and she felt her skin break out in goosebumps even through her long-sleeve sweater and her sherpa-lined winter coat. While  _ physically _ he looked like a significantly different man, his  _ voice _ was still the same. At thirteen, the smokey raspiness combined with his gaunt living-dead appearance had had a pretty terrifying effect on her. Now, however, at the ripe age of twenty and him looking more Damon Baker photoshoot rather than early Nineties Dave Grohl, she found his voice to have a much different effect as her nipples began to tighten into hard nubs. 

“Hold on to me,” he said as he offered her his elbow to grab on to, the oddly measured cadence of his voice further confirming to her that he was still the man she’d known as a child. 

They made their way toward the house much slower than she was expecting given that he ran outside not only without a coat, but just in a long sleeve thermal cotton shirt. “Sorry,” he said his voice rumbling slightly over her head as he loomed a little over her, “I didn’t think it’d get icy so soon. I would’ve put down some kitty litter.”

Her fingers reflexively tightened around the crook of his elbow. “It’s ok,” she said, her teeth lightly chattering in the cold air, the tips of her fingers all but numb except for the traces of body heat she was soaking up through his shirt sleeve. 

There was a harsh whisper above her that she thought sounded vaguely like “fuck” but she couldn’t be sure between the naturally low tenor of his voice and the intentionally muffled curse. Suddenly, she found her nearly frozen fingers pried off his arm, only for Kurtz to turn perpendicular to her and abruptly sweep her into a bridal carry. Her mouth dropped open as she felt him crush her legs closer to his chest, small frosty puffs of white periodically escaping her like a smokestack on a steam train. To keep her mind off the tempting question of what his body must look like  _ under _ his clothes if he was so easily able to pick her up without notice, she trained her eyes firmly on the side of his neck. Although the taut cords she saw there evidenced the exertion he was extending by carrying her, she was amazed at the way his pulse barely seemed to speed up at all. 

Freed from having to match his pace to hers in order to help ensure she didn’t wipe out on his walkway, he quickened his stride making it up the stairs to his front porch in about seven steps. “I need to put you down,” he rasped as he carefully lowered her legs to the ground. When she automatically went to nod her head in acknowledgment, their proximity meant she accidentally wound up nuzzling against his chest like a cat. For the briefest of split seconds, she thought his hands squeezed her a little tighter in response but the moment was so fleeting she was almost positive she’d imagined it. 

It wasn’t until they were inside the house and she suddenly noticed the missing weight of his arm against her lower back that she realized he’d kept his arm draped around her even after he’d first set her down. 

‘I seriously need to get laid more when I get back to school,’ she found herself thinking, ‘if that’s all it’s going to take to get me turned on.’ 

The last time she’d been in what now appeared to be Kurtz’s house was seven years earlier, the night he got arrested. Nothing about the interior was as she remembered it. None of the windows were boarded up or covered in tin foil. All of the creepy streamers hanging from the ceiling were gone. The floor looked so immaculately clean that she was willing to upgrade the Five Second Rule to a full five minutes. 

Looking around her, she saw a little white wicker side table from a flea market that looked upcycled, a small ceramic bowl with a set of car keys sitting on top. There was a well-loved canvas satchel half stuffed with accordion files resting neatly on the floor next to the table. Beyond that, she noticed a heavy duty grey rubber mat with a pair of scuffed up combat boots, a pair of black Chuck Taylors, and a pair of red and tan snow boots all laid out meticulously in a row. Glancing over at Kurtz, he seemed to be half-an-inch shorter as he walked a little further into the house wearing just his socks. 

She realized he must’ve sensed her hesitation when he suddenly stopped and turned to her, saying “I understand why you wouldn’t want to take off your shoes. I won’t mind if you keep them on. That’s just something I do.” JB released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and nodded her head in thanks. As a sign that she didn’t completely distrust him though, she shrugged off her jacket, and hung it on a small coat hook she had previously noticed.

Kurtz continued to watch her with that all-seeing gaze he had before he added, “I thought we might talk in the living room, but it’s really wherever you’d feel most comfortable.” 

JB looked over at the living room. To someone who’d never been in the house before, it might’ve looked welcoming: Kurtz had done a good job with a tidy secondhand loveseat, a small entertainment center with a forty-two inch tv and an Xbox One, a pair of chairs from IKEA, and an oval coffee table. As she scanned the room though, she found herself looking for any signs of blood from when Ricky got stabbed, or places where the walls got respackled from the punches Jughead and Sweet Pea had been throwing. An uncomfortable tension settled into her shoulders as she momentarily found herself thinking what a stupid idea it had been to meet him. Forcing herself to take a calming breath and think of FP’s second chances, she said surprisingly evenly, “Maybe the kitchen would be better.” 

Kurtz’s eyes tracked where she’d been looking and understanding dawned on him almost immediately. “Of course,” he said, “I should’ve realized. Right this way,” he added with a wave of his hand. 

It took less than a minute for them to walk from the front of the house to the kitchen. Kurtz flicked on a couple light switches soon bathing the kitchen in a warm glow. The first thing JB noticed was that, like the rest of the house, the kitchen was immaculately clean. She found the sight oddly comforting—a sign of just how much Kurtz had changed in the years since she’d last seen him. 

“Can I get you anything? Water? Soda?” he asked, hovering between the refrigerator and the sink. His earnestness at being the perfect host was actually becoming painful for Jellybean to watch, much to her surprise. Leaning against the door jam to the kitchen, she decided to put the young man out of his apparent misery. 

“Kurtz,” she said, “You can relax. This isn’t a date and I’m not really a guest. You don’t need to impress me. It’s not a big deal.” 

The nervous energy he’d practically been vibrating with since she crossed the threshold into his house ceased as he seemed to deflate a little bit. He caught her eye as he looked up from his feet and her breath caught in her throat at the extent of the unexpected vulnerability she found staring back at her. His naturally deep tenor voice sounded a smidge more gravelly than it had previously when he said, “I’ve waited five years to do this not counting my time in Juvie, Jellybean. In fact, you’re the last person I need to make amends with, so for me, this is actually a huge deal.” 

JB tried, unsuccessfully, not to gape at him. She leaned a little more heavily against the plain wooden moulding as she tried to process what he’d said. Five years. She couldn’t imagine why it’d take him that long to work up to making peace with her. Surely Ricky or Joaquin would’ve been harder? And she couldn’t imagine Jughead had been welcoming; if he had, he’d certainly never mentioned it. 

“I don’t understand,” she eventually said lamely. 

Kurtz sank heavily into the lone chair at the card table doubling as his kitchen table. He propped his forehead on his clenched hands, the muscles in his shoulders constricting from the tension in the room. When he finally looked back up, she was struck for a second by how  _ lost _ he looked, and for the first time since she’d gotten out of her car, she felt like she was looking at the seventeen year old boy she once knew in passing. 

“I had a lot of time to think in Juvie, and even more time to reflect while going through therapy,” he said quietly, “and of all the people I hurt back then, you deserved it least.” Before she had a chance to say anything, he started, “You were a child,” but JB promptly cut him off. “Ricky was too,” she spat.

He nodded woodenly in agreement before saying,”That’s true. But he was also a runner for me, long before Joaquin got into my debt, which his older brother didn’t know.” When JB physically recoiled at the bomb he dropped on her, he hastened to add,”But I made peace—with both of them—a long time ago. I apologized to Ricky for taking advantage of his age and the fact that things weren’t good at home to get him to work for me. Joaquin and I made amends when I helped get him into rehab for Fizzle Rocks. He’ll be clean three years in March. Sometimes we go to meetings together.” 

She only realized how horrified she must’ve looked at his explanation when she caught sight of a wildness in his eyes that was fueled by fear. Jellybean forced herself to close her eyes and take a step back. It wasn’t her place to police the relationship Kurtz had with Ricky, or even Joaquin. If he’d made amends with them, that was all that mattered; it wasn’t her place to have an opinion on the matter. ( _ A concept she’d  _ frequently  _ given her brother shit for over the years. _ )

‘How many times did I get pissed off at Northsiders for looking down on FP because of how he treated me and Jug? When they never once did a thing to stop him while he was drinking, or tried to help us when he’d disappear for days? When’s the last time I talked to Ricky? I didn’t even know Joaquin went to rehab,’ she thought bitterly, the taste of her hypocrisy sitting sour in her mouth. 

Swallowing some of her infamous Jones pigheadedness, she choked out, “I’m sorry.” 

At first, he didn’t react, so she repeated slightly louder, “I’m sorry, Kurtz. I promised myself I’d hear you out, and instead I judged you like all those douchebags on the Northside used to judge FP.” 

“You were right though, JB,” he said quietly. “I did some evil things.”

Jellybean scoffed. “ _ Evil _ ? Kurtz, Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. Pol Pot was evil. You were a tweaked out teenage asshole. Don’t give yourself so much credit.” She gave him a conspiratorial wink as she said it to take some of the sting out of her words, earning her a sardonic smirk from the young man. 

“I am sorry for everything I did to you, JB,” he said sincerely, “You never should’ve been at that party. I’m sorry for trying to get you hooked on Jingle Jangle to get back at Jug. I’m sorry you had to see what happened to Ricky. I’m sorry you got locked in that cupboard until Sheriff Keller and FP were able to find you.”

She let his voice wash over her, carefully weighing his honesty with each word. JB had spent more of her life surrounded by liars and cheats, conmen and charlatans, than around “normal” people. Her bullshit meter was finely tuned in the womb. Every word out of Kurtz’s mouth smacked of sincerity. Just as she was about to tell him she forgave him and everything between them was cool, a thought occurred to her.

“Do you believe, Kurtz?” she asked.

He gave her a strange look before saying, “After my stint following the Gargoyle King, I have to admit, I’m a little leery of religion.”

She nodded in understanding, then shook her head. “Makes sense, but no, I just meant in some kind of higher cosmic force, something like that.”

“I dunno, maybe,” he said replied. 

“I think, perhaps, our paths were meant to cross,” she said slowly. When all he did was give her a questioning look, she added, “Think about it. If you didn’t invite me to that party, then Jug would’ve had no reason to storm the barricades with the rest of the Serpents. Ricky never gets stabbed. I never get accidentally kidnapped. You don’t wind up in Juvie and get your shit together.” Her voice picked up speed as she spoke, similar to the way it did when she got excited about a new mechanical engineering principle. 

Kurtz stared at her with a queer look on his face before eventually saying uncertainly, “You got all that from being locked in a cupboard at thirteen?”

Jellybean shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing the backs of her shoulder blades. “Comparative Philosophy, Tuesdays and Thursdays last semester. My advisor finally got on my ass about not taking my required bullshit humanities elective.” 

The cheeky no-nonsense way she said it torn a rich laugh from him that surprised her as the sound reverberated around the tiny kitchen space. “And here I thought there was only one talented wordsmith in the Jones family,” he said glibly.

Once their joint laughter died down, they remained in companionable silence for several minutes, each deep in thought. JB was glad she decided to take the chance to meet up with him. While she generally believed she had moved on from that night, every so often flashbacks tended to creep up on her in nasty ways. ( _ She’d freaked out her freshman roommate, Ann, so badly one night during midterms when she’d woken her screaming in terror to be let out of the cupboard that the poor girl had refused to sleep in the same room for the rest of the semester. _ ) Between Kurtz’s apology and seeing how vastly different the house now was, she was hoping the images from their past would be less inclined to haunt her. 

Before she really had a chance to think about it, she found herself asking, “I have to ask, Kurtz, what’s the deal with the house?”

He chuckled, sitting up straighter as he leaned against the short back of his chair, the thinner cotton of his shirt stretching across his pecs, giving her a teasing suggestion of his defined chest. “Sweat equity,” he said as if that should explain everything. When she continued staring at him blankly, he chuckled again. “I was part of a pilot program in Juvie. For kids like me who were going to be aged out of foster care when we got out and didn’t have anyone else, the state agreed to buy some blighted properties from a few local banks. In exchange for renovating the houses, we got the deeds when we finished. Given the reputation this house had, first with that serial killer and later with what happened to Ricky, no one wanted to come near it. It just seemed like a natural fit to me. Working on the house was like a physical version of therapy. Rip out a wall here. Get rid of some rotting floorboards there. By the time I was done, we were both saved.” 

As Kurtz spoke, he glowed with increasing pride, the small quirk at the corner of his mouth threatening to break into a full-on smile at any moment. Jellybean couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked to someone who was so filled with passion—genuine passion—about something. Her brother used to get animated like that, but since becoming a father he spent most of his “spare” energy catching up on sleep. Her Fluid Mechanics professor came close, but there was a nostalgia to her professor’s enthusiasm. The actual science was still exciting, but after having to break it down to its most basic elements for the last thirteen years for a bunch of second semester Freshmen who might still wash out of the engineering program, the passion for  _ teaching  _ the science was a little dulled. JB refused to count any of the guys she knew on campus on principle: all of them were soft bois who wouldn’t last a minute on the Southside. 

Although she didn’t want to admit it, the dichotomy that was Kurtz was turning her on in a way she hadn’t anticipated. On the one hand, he was a former drug dealer and cook, who’d intentionally sparked a gang war, that got her friend stabbed, and who thought of himself as evil. But on the other hand, he read poetry and kept his house freakishly clean and seemed unnaturally attuned to her feelings and concerns. ‘Much like a gargoyle,’ she heard Gracie’s voice whisper in her mind, ‘A frightening protector.’ Jellybean involuntarily squeezed her thighs a little tighter. 

Kurtz’s voice broke through her brief reverie when she heard him mutter apologetically, “God, JB, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize how late it was. Are you gonna be ok driving home?” 

She pulled out her phone to check the time: 10:37. Not extraordinarily late for a college student like her, but Kurtz’s house was on the far outskirts of Riverdale, and the roads were mostly unlit. So long as the flurries of snow  _ stayed _ flurries while they’d been talking, she wasn’t too concerned about the road conditions. “Yeah,” she said, “although I should get going just to be safe.” 

With an understanding head nod, Kurtz rose from the table to walk JB to the door. Right as he approached, she turned sideways to make more room for him. The sudden movement, however, had the unintended consequence of causing his upper arm to graze directly across her breasts. She tried (mostly) successfully to swallow the moan that attempted to escape her mouth from the abrupt stimulation against her nipples. JB was so focused on minimizing her own reaction though that she completely missed the way his gait stuttered the tiniest bit as their bodies made contact. 

The walk down the hall was brief, and she was mildly disappointed at how quickly they reached the front door. They stood facing each awkwardly for a minute, neither one sure of the protocol for their situation. A handshake seemed oddly formal under the circumstances, but a hug seemed a little aggressively presumptuous. 

The weather saved them from having to figure it out. When Kurtz opened the front door in an effort to dispel some of the uncomfortable tension between them, both of them widened their eyes in shock as the earlier flurries had brewed into a full-on snow storm. They stood in the doorway mutually gaping at the change in the weather, when it suddenly occurred to him that they were letting all the heat out of the house. With a quick swing of his hand, Kurtz closed the front door as Jellybean’s teeth began chattering from the extended blast of cold air, her hand hanging in the air as she blindly reached for her jacket. 

Wrapping his arm around her waist, he slowly guided her away from the pocket of cold air clinging to the vestibule around the front door. He instinctively went to bring her into the living room because most of his furniture was there; however, when her shoulders started to seize up, he guided her over to the stairs instead. Once he was content that she was decently comfortable, he jogged up the rest of the stairs to pull one of the numerous micro fleece blankets he owned off his bed. When he came back down, Kurtz carefully wrapped the blanket around her until she looked like a strange, fuzzy burrito. Her mind conjured the image of a guy who’d lived in her dorm Freshman year, who’d walked around campus every day in April wearing a fleece Snuggie while pledging his fraternity. She tried laughing at the image but she was still so cold that her teeth simply chattered together in an odd staccato rhythm, which seemed to freak Kurtz out.

He immediately scooted next to her on the stairs and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, rubbing his hand up and down the length of her blanket-covered upper arm. The friction from his hand combined with his added body heat slowly helped stop her shivering until eventually they were just sitting huddled together at the foot of his staircase. When Kurtz didn’t immediately remove his arm from around her like he had before, JB decided to give in to the sheer  _ comfort _ of the gesture, and she rested her head lightly against his chest. She waited for him to recoil or to nudge her head back up before she let more of her weight rest against him. Eventually, she felt his additional weight as he rested his chin against the crown of her head. 

Jellybean wasn’t sure how long they stayed cuddled up like that, although she knew it was long enough for her ass to go numb from sitting on the wooden stairs. She tentatively rolled her hips around, trying to restart the blood flow to her posterior. The sudden movement caused Kurtz’s hand to reflexively grab her bicep like a toddler refusing to let go of a plushie, and she realized he had nodded off. The knowledge left her with a menu of unenviable choices all of which either involved waking Kurtz up, sleeping someplace uncomfortable, or both. Ultimately, she decided that waking him up was the least bad of her poor choices. 

With a little bit of effort, she was able to snake one of her hands out of the blanket burrito, and she patted him on the chest. At first, nothing happened, but then she noticed Kurtz was whimpering softly like he was having a bad dream. She patted him more rapidly. When he still didn’t wake up, she finally pulled her head away from his chest. His head sagged forward immediately from the loss of support, but the whimpering didn’t stop. Looking at him with concern, she used her free hand to rub his cheek comfortingly while she softly whispered his name and the reminder “I’m here. You’re safe.” 

His eyes snapped open as he violently awoke from his nightmare. The fear bleeding out of his pores tasted sour in her mouth, and her heart clenched at the thought of what must’ve been haunting him so badly. She continued to mindlessly stroke his face as she quietly  _ hushed _ him until the thrumming wings of the hummingbird trapped under his skin slowed to a less frenetic beat. He closed his eyes like he was in pain before dropping his forehead against hers. “I’m so sorry, Jellybean,” he said, the sincerity of the raw anguish in his voice undeniable.

“ _ Shhhh _ ,” she soothed, her lips within inches of his. “Why don’t we get you to bed?” she said gently.

Kurtz nodded his head as much as he could given their proximity before shakily standing up. JB felt the loss of his presence immediately and tried to suppress the shiver that threatened to go through her as she lamented his missing body heat again. As she stood up to join him, she shimmied her shoulders a bit so that her blanket encasement fell apart returning her full range of motion. Before the blanket was able to completely crumple into a heap on the steps, she grabbed hold of an end and balled the soft microfleece up in her arms prior to following in his footsteps. 

He leaned a little heavily on the staircase railing and she debated whether to ditch the blanket in order to support his weight with her arm around his back. Just then, the bannister gave a creaky whinge as it protested under his weight. The blanket dropped immediately as Jellybean’s arm shot out to support his back. Kurtz shivered under her touch, and she urged him up the stairs through the firm guidance of her forearm. 

JB counted twenty-four steps as they made their way upstairs with Kurtz getting a little steadier with each one. By the time they made it to the top of the stairs, she was pretty sure he no longer needed her support, but she let her arm linger around him anyway, greedily soaking up how solid and  _ real _ he felt. Kurtz started shuffling toward one of the three doors she saw. As he pushed the ajar door open, Jellybean noted the small, but sturdy writing desk pushed against one wall along with three short bookcases. Against the opposite wall was a small couch in a nondescript grey-taupe color with a shocking pale orange creamsicle crocheted blanket like one might find at a church fundraiser draped meticulously over one arm. On the opposite side of the blanket were two matching grey-taupe end pillows. Stacked neatly in front of those was a slightly larger decorative pillow with the perfectly embroidered image of a kitten hanging off a branch and the words “Keep Hanging In There” in boxy stitched lettering. JB was thankful Kurtz was standing so closely beside her because she didn’t trust herself to keep the full extent of the shock off her face. 

“I can sleep in my office,” he said softly, “You take the bed.” 

He’d already taken a step into the room by the time she found her voice enough to say, “Don’t be stupid. Your house, your bed. I think I can manage sleeping on a couch again for a night, Kurtz.” 

She gave him the infamous Jones Glare when it looked like he was going to object, and he caved—although not before giving her an annoyed look of his own. As she moved to push passed him into the room, her arm brushed against his chest and he muttered, “Are you Jones always such pains in the ass?” 

Jellybean turned and gave him a smug look. “No. We’re normally indifferent to most people. Must just mean we like ya,” she said punctuating her comment with an exaggerated wink. 

“Lucky me,” he said dryly before turning to head to his bedroom. 

* * *

She shifted around on the sofa for the fifth time in less than twenty minutes and was really starting to regret her urge to be noble by not kicking Kurtz out of his own bed. Although the couch cushions were comfortable enough, at five feet seven inches she found herself actually stuck been a rock and a hard place. If she stretched her legs out, the lower five inches of her legs dangled awkwardly over the arm of the couch. On the flip side, she had to fold herself uncomfortably up like an accordion if she wanted to squeeze the full length of her body on to the postage stamp of a couch. An ache was beginning to settle in at the base of her neck having quickly established there was no room for both her and any of the small pillows. She let out a disgruntled huff as she resigned herself to a night of shitty sleep when she heard a light knock on the door. 

“Yeah?” she snapped as she yanked the door open right before her mouth went dry. 

Kurtz was standing in front of her in a slightly baggy dark grey thermal long-sleeve shirt and grey and black plaid flannel pajama pants slung low on his hips, his hair tousled like he’d been nervously running his fingers through it. A twitch seemed to hover at the corner of his mouth unsure whether it wanted to become an upset grimace or a smug smirk. He peered behind her into the office trying to ignore the way Jellybean’s crossed arms were accentuating the swell of her breasts. “Everything ok?” he asked cautiously.

“Aside from Satan’s couch over there, peachy,” she groused. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her eyes flew to his face and she automatically cringed in anticipation of his reaction. Instead of the anger she expected at the insult, he was looking at her with a disconcerting amount of contemplation. The silence between continued to stretch until JB started to squirm from the increasing awkwardness. Her movements brought Kurtz out of his reverie. “We can still swap,” he offered with a quiet graciousness that she wasn’t expecting. 

JB gaped at him, turning around several times to glance between him and the couch. “You won’t fit!” she eventually spluttered. 

He gave her an odd look that for a split second she would’ve called “envious” before he said in a near whisper, “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve squatted on a couple couch cushions on a floor.” 

Her blood ran cold at the heavy implication behind his words. Glancing back at the couch one more time, she quickly calculated whether she could arrange the cushions in such a way as to comfortably fit without leaving a gap between them. When she realized there wasn’t, her spine protested but she resolved herself. “Well, now that I know the trick,” she said resolutely, “there’s no need to swap. Good night,” she added as she went to close the door.

“JB,” he said in that hard tone Jughead still tried to use on her when he forgot she was an adult. 

She swiftly cut him off. “Kurtz. It’s. Fine.”

He gave her a tired eye roll torn between wanting to do the right thing and wanting a decent night’s sleep. The only excuse he had for what came out of his mouth next was the fact that he wasn’t entirely awake. They were both in the middle of turning back to their respective rooms when he muttered half under his breath, “It’s not like the bed isn’t big enough.” 

Both of them froze in mid-turn as each of them realized what he’d said. 

Jellybean took a long look at the torturous couch, and every part of her started to ache. She was on the verge of choosing the couch on principle though, when her inner voice piped up, ‘At least you won’t have to  _ completely _ lie to Gracie about sleeping with him.’ Given how much her best friend loved giving her shit for not sleeping around more, JB liked the idea of trolling her with some played up story of a sexploit that never happened. 

“Well, why didn’t you say so! That’s a horse of a different color,” she quipped as she spun back around to face Kurtz. 

He eyed her warily before letting out a tired sigh and waving for her to follow him. 

They padded silently to the open door across the hall from Kurtz’s office. As they entered his bedroom, she found herself struck by how different it was from the room they’d left. Unlike the kitschy homey touches in his office, his bedroom was almost devoid of personal effects aside from a smattering of framed black and white landscapes and still lifes adorning his walls. There was a bureau pushed up against a wall next to a window box seat overlooking the backyard, and a small round side table with a Himalayan salt lamp emitting a soft pink-orange glow tucked in a corner next to a queen-sized bed. 

Instead of a comforter, he seemed to have seven or eight blankets of various weights—all of which were bunched in tangled lump at the foot of his bed. His light teal sheets were rumpled so badly she immediately felt guilty for keeping him up with all her restlessness. When she turned around to apologize, she noticed he was studiously looking at anything in his bedroom but her. For a minute, she wasn’t sure whether she should be honored or offended by his actions until his eyes accidentally landed on her face and she saw nervousness bordering on outright panic hiding in their rich brown depths. 

Before she had a chance to tell him to relax, he awkwardly blurted out, “It’s been a while...since I’ve invited anyone in here.” 

For a young man her brother’s age, Kurtz suddenly seemed so much younger and more vulnerable. The thought ignited a strange urge in her to protect him. Searching her mind for anything that might ease the odd tension between them, she found herself conjuring up Gracie’s tales of pre-teen slumber parties. While she doubted Kurtz would be up for braiding each other’s hair—mostly because his wasn’t long enough to braid—she felt sure there was some kind of slumber party game they could play to break the awkwardness between them. 

“Do you want to play a game?” Jellybean said proud that she sounded more confident than she felt. 

Kurtz arched a questioning eyebrow at her. 

“You know, something like Truth or Dare?” she suggested, her mind jumping to the only party game she could remember that wasn’t Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven. 

He stared at her in disbelief before slowly parroting, “You….want...to play….Truth or  _ Dare _ ... _ with me _ ?”

Her Jones stubbornness kicked into overdrive as she got mildly offended by his implication that her suggestion wasn’t good. “Why not? Unless you’re a chicken, that is?” she taunted cheekily. 

Kurtz glared at her juvenile tactic putting the full weight of his disapproval into his stare before he finally huffed, “ _ Fine. _ ”

Jellybean climbed on to his bed with less grace than she would’ve liked—expecting it to be an inch and a half higher like the bed in her dorm. After scooting herself up against the pillows, she crossed her legs like a pretzel and patted the mattress next to her for him to join her. He, on the other hand, got on the bed with a naturally fluid grace that JB found more arousing than she imagined. As he burrowed himself in his blanket nest, she found herself wondering if Kurtz had checked her out as she’d galumphed on to his mattress. Her nipples tightened a little at the thought. 

He cleared his throat and she realized he’d caught her staring at him. A burning flush suffused her cheeks as embarrassment flooded through her, which wasn’t helped when she looked at his face and saw the odd not-smirk hovering around the corners of his mouth again. Sweeping his hand toward her, he said, “Ladies first,” a slight gravelliness suffusing his voice that her whole body to tingle. 

Taking a small steadying breath, she held his gaze as she asked, “Truth or dare?”

* * *

Jellybean wanted to crawl out of her skin. She was so used to all the boys she went to college with—who lacked substance or direction...or a basic sense of hygiene—that she hadn’t been prepared for the fact that getting to  _ know  _ Kurtz would make her more attracted to him. It turned out he was surprisingly sentimental as she’d learned when she’d asked him what was the one thing he’d save in a fire. (“ _ The orange blanket in my office. Maggie Fogarty made it for my one year work anniversary at the Andrews Center for At-Risk Youth. _ ”) He also had a sly sense of humor having dared her to cluck like a chicken for five minutes on the very first dare she’d taken. At the rate things were going, if they didn’t get to  _ actual _ sleep soon, she was going to climb him like a tree.

“One more round?” his unfairly, temptingly husky voice asked, only adding more fuel to her torment. 

“Sure,” she said, relieved that she would soon only have to be teased by her dreams, rather than by all of her senses at once. 

“Truth or dare?” he asked her, his brown eyes holding her gaze, the intimacy of the situation getting her too turned on for words. 

“Dare,” she answered, an unexpected huskiness bleeding into her own voice, which seemed to blow his pupils wider with what she’d call  _ lust _ in anyone else. Jellybean hadn’t given much thought to the choice other than hoping he’d pick something that would help her burn off some of her jittery sexual energy before she was going to have to sleep in the same bed as him without fooling around. His eyes dropped to her lips, and they seemed to linger there as she slowly moistened them with the tip of her pink tongue. A strange look passed over his eyes before he swallowed carefully, and said softly with a hunger that she wasn’t anticipating, “I dare you... _ to kiss me _ .” 

Her breathing hitched, and her body felt like it was going to spontaneously combust. Certain that her mind was playing tricks on her, she gave her head a small shake as if she was trying to clear water out of her ears. His eyes continued to drink her in with quiet expectation, and she repeated haltingly, “I’m...not sure...that I heard you...right. It sounded like….you dared me….to  _ kiss _ ….you.” He didn’t say anything for a long minute, letting her brain process everything on its own. 

Just as she was on the verge of completely short-circuiting, he added almost bashfully, “If you want to, that is. It’s completely your choice.”

A small growl slipped out of her mouth as she found herself stalking across the bed to get closer to him. JB had to admit that she was impressed. Despite the heightened tension in the room, Kurtz continued to watch her with her with an almost unfair passivity. However, she also found his lack of reaction maddening. Ever since she’d arrived at his house, he had been almost painfully restrained, like he was afraid he might break her at any moment. While her rationale self could appreciate his restraint, that part of her lizard brain that sounded increasingly like Gracie was screaming for him to ravish her. 

As the gap between them got incrementally smaller, she kept her eyes glued to his face while his jumped erratically between her eyes and her lips. Every time his gaze dropped to her mouth, she instinctively bit her lower lip; and she’d catch his hands clenching the blankets next to his knees at the edge of her vision. Once she was close enough to him to feel the short puffs of his exhaled breaths against her face, she leaned infinitesimally closer to him and whispered against his lips, “ _ You dare me to kiss you _ ?” 

He shivered and she wanted to crow in triumph until she heard him whisper back more smugly than she would’ve anticipated, “ _ Unless, of course, you’re a chicken? _ ”

She wasn’t entirely sure how the hairsbreadth of a gap between their mouths was closed--whether because one of them leaned in, or simply because she exhaled. What she was certain of though was the tingling buzz that electrified her entire body the minute their lips connected. 

The kiss started as a soft press of flesh before morphing into something else--something darker, more frenzied. Her hands flew to his hair as she dragged her short nails against his scalp, his ruffled bangs tickling her forehead as their mouths moved against one another like writhing eels. His hands framed her face, pressing against her jawbone with a gentle firmness as he sought to guide the direction of their kiss. He parted his lips as he tilted his head to the side, and Jellybean pounced on the opportunity to slip the tip of her tongue artfully inside his mouth. 

Kurtz groaned as her fleeting flicks and swipes steadily drove him mad, his cock stiffening further with each passing second. The rational part of his brain knew daring her to kiss him was a mistake. He’d damn near given himself an eye cramp trying not to make it obvious that he couldn’t keep his attention off her mouth all night. It was part of why he hadn’t brought up the idea of sharing his bed originally--he doubted he’d be able to keep away from her without driving himself mad. Then, she’d made enough noise to wake the damned while trying to sleep in his office. Short of grabbing his headphones and turning his music up to permanent hearing loss levels, he’d known there was no way he’d get any sleep if Jellybean stayed on his couch. Despite his increased proximity to temptation, he still had held out hope on not giving in to his baser desires….a hope that lasted until she suggested playing Truth or Dare. At that point, he resigned himself to the fact that Fate apparently didn’t give a rat’s ass about his noble intentions. 

She pulled back from him slightly and he nipped lightly at her lip. The slight, unexpected sting caused her to whimper as the near constant throb in her pussy intensified. JB inched closer to him on her knees bringing their bodies flush together, the friction of their torsos rubbing against each other wrecking hell on her increasingly overstimulated nipples through the thin barriers of her satin bra and her cotton sweater. Her fingers raked down his neck, along the defined length of his spine, before gripping on to his hips as if they were natural anchor points. As her hands clutched at him--leaving perfect dime-sized bruises on the pale skin under his clothes--he unconsciously rocked his pelvis against hers. 

JB felt her lungs suddenly compress as she accidentally ground herself against the conspicuous outline of Kurtz’s generous endowment. His hands immediately fell from her face to her shoulders as his head dropped forward against her collar bone and he let out a guttural “JB.” The gutted sound of her name on his lips along with the rich vibrations of his voice on the delicate expanse of her neck caused her skin to break out in a sweeping prickle of goosebumps. She intentionally bumped her hips against his a second time, quivering a little at the thought of how’d he feel stretching her pussy tight around his cock. 

He groaned even louder against the side of her neck, sealing her resolve. Bending her head a fraction of an inch, she hissed next to his ear, “Tell me you have condoms somewhere in this fucking house, Kurtz.” 

It took him a minute to fully process what she’d said, which was for the best. The split second delay in his reaction time just long enough for her to move her head to the side when he whipped his own up to stare at her intently. When he continued to gawk at her, she added in a soft voice that was part cheeky taunt, part emboldened promise, “Because if you don’t, you’re gonna spend the next couple hours having to listen and watch as I play with my nice juicy cunt.” 

Kurtz moved with a speed she wasn’t expecting, one hand gripping the back of her head while the other clutched her hip with bruising force as he pulled her in for another all-consuming kiss. He pivoted his weight toward his back hip the abrupt shift causing them to fall on to the mattress, their feet tangling up in the nest of blankets at the foot of his bed. JB squeaked from the unexpected change in their positioning, the partially muffled sound turning into a deep moan of need as the full weight of his body pressed her into the mattress. 

The stiff swell of his cock rubbed along the seam of her jeans as she reflexively pulled her knees up, clamping them against his hips. His lips ghosted along the column of her neck and she ground her pelvis even harder against him. Kurtz nipped at her sensitive skin, his hand simultaneously skirting up the side of her torso until he was able to cup her breast through the soft black merino-cotton blend of her sweater. 

His lips ran lightly along the exposed swell of her breasts before he growled darkly against her chest, “You are far too overdressed, JB.” 

She arched her back while rolling her hips teasingly against him causing Kurtz to let out a strangled noise. Jellybean craned her neck until she was able to whisper against his lips, “What are you going to do about it then?” 

Kurtz’s fingers made short work of unbuttoning her jeans and pushing the panels apart revealing her black and red plaid satin bikini brief underwear. His hand inched lower, his fingertips drawn to the damp patch on the crotch of her underwear like magnets. He pressed against the hard slippery nub he could feel hiding at the apex of her thighs, and Jellybean’s body jerked as she let out a high-pitched keen. “That’s right,” he purred into the side of her neck. “Who’s a good girl for me? Her pussy all good and wet just the way I want it.” 

“You’re such a tease, Kurtz” she whined. “Are you going to make me cum or not?”

He chuckled and the sound made the walls of her pussy flutter. “What’s the magic word?” he taunted, his fingers stilling in their maddening rhythm. 

Jellybean whimpered while rocking her hips against his again. “ _ Please _ ,” she pleaded. 

His fingertips slipped under the edge of her underwear tracing her dripping slit, and she shuddered. He probed her entrance tentatively, sliding his middle and index fingers inside her as far as his first knuckle, giving her body a chance to adjust to the feel of them. The slick feel of her tested his restraint more than he imagined it would, his year of unplanned celibacy leaving him far more on edge than he realized. As she slowly accommodated his presence, his fingers eased deeper inside her until they were buried two knuckle-lengths inside her, and he stumbled on the bumpy ridges that made up her G-spot. 

Jellybean had never been stimulated that way and the odd sense of pressure made her squirm. Then he increased the force of his frustratingly even strokes making her whine with need. Kurtz gave a low chuckle of smug approval as he teased, “Yes?” 

She whined again—more a high-pitched buzzing of her lips than anything else—before whimpering, “I thought you were gonna make me cum…”

He gently nibbled her earlobe as he whispered, “Oh, you’ll get your  _ orgasms _ , Jellybean.  _ I promise _ .” 

Before her brain could fully understand his words, the fingers buried in her cunt picked up speed. Her hips began to hump his hand as the pressure in the front wall of her pussy continued to build. Just then, she let out a short surprised squeak as she felt the familiar contractions of orgasmic bliss deep in her pussy.

For a minute, she just laid there, shocked. She had undoubtedly cum, but she still felt the buzzy energy in her skin as if she  _ hadn’t _ . It left her feeling like she needed to cum again, which was absurd because no one ( _ including herself _ ) had ever made her orgasm more than once. 

Sensing movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned her head only to see Kurtz sucking her arousal off his fingers. Immediately, she felt embarrassed. The handful of guys she’d let finger her before had always just wiped their hands off on any available surface afterward, and the two guys who’d gone down on her had been quite vocal about how disgusting pussy tasted. She looked away from him then not wanting his inevitable disgust to dampen the gentle endorphin-fueled bliss suffusing her body. 

JB wasn’t entirely sure when she’d closed her eyes, but she knew exactly what caused them to snap open. Kurtz peppered the side of her neck with featherlight kisses, his hand tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck. When he finally worked his way up to her ear, he purred, “Absolutely delicious. I think I need seconds.” 

“ _ Seconds _ ?” she stammered, “Didn’t you think it was gross?”

“Hardly,” he answered, “I think your special lemony tang just became my new favorite flavor.” 

“You don’t have to say that to be nice,” she pushed back, “I know boys don’t like the taste of pussy.” 

Kurtz pushed himself up on one elbow so he could look at her better. When she refused to return his gaze, he gently took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward his. He waited until he was positive that he had her completely undivided attention before he said in utter seriousness, “You’re right, Jellybean-- _ boys _ don’t, but  _ I _ haven’t been  _ a boy _ in a very long time. I assure you,  _ men _ most definitely  _ do _ like the taste of pussy.” 

JB’s cunt  _ throbbed _ at the implication. 

“Just how much do you like pussy?” she asked coyly.

He grinned at her. 

Removing skinny jeans while horny beyond belief was a special kind of torture. One Kurz increasingly believed he was being subjected to by a higher power to make up for all manner of sins he didn’t realize he needed to repent for. When his fifth attempt at peeling off her jeans was foiled, he asked in frustration, “Are you fond of these?” 

Stuck in her own lust haze, she said “No” without fully thinking about the question.

“Good,” he growled almost immediately before leaning over to open the drawer to his bedside table. A second later, he whipped out his switchblade and slowly dragged the tip of the steel along the thin skin covering her hip bones. JB shivered, and he ran the flat of the blade up her partially exposed stomach, the small hand guard at the top of the handle pushing the hem of her sweater up toward the underside of her breasts. The warm pink-orange glow of his lamp glinted off the polished face of the knife as the tip scraped lightly over the barely visible ridges of her ribs. She mewled as the delicate scratching set every nerve in her body on fire. Kurtz slid the blade back down toward her waistband, drawing the denim taut against the razor sharp edge. With a few lightning quick flicks of his wrist, he successfully sliced the offending pair of pants off her. 

Once she was finally left in just her sweater and her underwear, he leaned back on his haunches to take stock of his handiwork. “Beautiful,” he whispered reverently, drinking in the sight of her lithe, milky legs. Her thighs butterflied open invitingly, and he forced himself to watch her face rather than to stare hungrily at her still hidden pussy. Jellybean watched him intently, her naked lust partially obscured by her hooded eyelids. “Absolutely beautiful,” he whispered again. 

She dug her teeth gently into her plump bottom lip. The anticipation of... _ everything _ ...was just about killing her. Arching an expectant eyebrow, she quipped in mock seriousness, “If you’re just planning to watch, I might just have to finish what you started after all.” 

The dark threat in his voice was unmistakable as he commanded, “ _ Don’t even think about it _ .” 

“Or what?” she challenged, one hand sliding up the front of her abdomen, her fingers on the verge of pushing under the rucked up hem of her sweater. In the blink of an eye, he’d pulled her hand away from her chest and had their entwined fingers pinned beside her head as he hissed, “ _ This _ ,” a second before he crushed his mouth back against hers. 

Their kiss consumed her in a way she’d never experienced. She felt light-headed like her soul had taken leave of her body. And yet, every sensation felt more pronounced as if every source of stimuli had direct access to her raw nerve endings. Her skin was so hot, she was convinced she was on the verge of spontaneous combustion, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn away from the raging inferno that was their shared passion. None of the hundreds of words scrambling around in her brain seemed adequate for conveying how she felt, and in the absence of more articulate direction, she found herself begging in a desperate breath, “Please.” 

Kurtz could only credit some long buried instinct for how he managed to pull JB’s briefs down one handed all while feeling like he was a marionette being controlled by some external force. The clean, tangy scent of her arousal hovered in the moist air surrounding her bare cunt, and it fueled an undeniable hunger in him. Although it pained him, he forced himself to pull away from their magnetic kiss, nearly falling back on her beestung lips as her mouth chased after his for several seconds afterwards. His eyes drifted down toward her neatly waxed pussy, his mouth beginning to water from an almost Pavlovian response to the sight of her. 

Jellybean shrieked as his warm tongue confidently probed her slick channel. Kurtz immediately pulled away from her, a look of confused worry sunk into the crease in his forehead. At the loss of contact, she struggled up to her elbows and met his gaze with her own look of confused annoyance. 

“Everything alri…” he started to ask before she promptly cut him off.

“Yeah. Great. Don’t stop,” she huffed with a pointed look from his face to her pussy. 

“As you wish,” he said softly to himself.

Bringing his mouth back down to her pussy, he decided to try a less aggressive method. He spread her thighs a little wider then lightly ran his tongue down the creases where her legs joined her pelvis. His lips pulled into a small grin that he hid against her skin when she squirmed like he was tickling her. Kurtz nuzzled against her inner thigh soaking in everything about that moment: the softness of her skin, the mewling noises she made as her frustration battled with her desire, and especially the intoxicating aroma of her arousal. 

As the tangy scent of her filled his head, his mouth began watering and his cock throbbed with an insistency he found increasingly difficult to ignore. Returning to the glistening entrance of her cunt, he flicked his tongue sporadically against her puffy outer lips causing JB to whinge from the lack of stimulation. Once her hips began twisting and humping the air, searching desperately for more friction, he finally slipped the flat of his tongue slowly back inside her. 

JB let out a deep moaning sigh of contentment at the feel of him, her hands gripping his sheets firmly. A slight tremble developed in her thigh as he deliberately stroked the outside of her upper leg in time with each long measured lick of her pussy. As he continued running his hands methodically over her body, he silently catalogued every reaction she made. How the quivering in her legs accelerated from “leaf blown by a gentle breeze” to “frozen, angry chihuahua” whenever he sped up the flickering of his tongue against her clit. How every muscle in her body instantly contracted into a steel plate whenever she wanted to touch him, but she stopped herself.

There was something undeniably gratifying about how responsive she was to his touch. Having not been with a woman for so long, Kurtz was more nervous than he’d care to admit that his oral skills were rusty. Despite the encouragement from each breathy sigh that escaped her lips and every white knuckle twist of his sheets, he selfishly  _ needed _ her to cum from riding his mouth—needed to hear her scream his name as she suffocated him between her locked up thighs….Needed to know that if this was the only chance he ever got to drink her heady arousal that she would think of how well  _ he’d  _ pleasured her when some other  _ boy _ was reluctantly going down on her leaving her unsatisfied yet again. 

His desire—nay, compulsion—to imprint himself on her body was almost frightening in its intensity, and he used the feeling to drive his efforts. He knew he’d finally succeeded when Jellybean’s resolve not to touch him finally cracked. Her long, delicate fingers flew to the back of his head, causing an unexpected sting as they pulled on the finer hairs closer to his neck, when he started licking her engorged clit in a semicolon pattern. A part of him was caught off guard by the amount of pressure she was exerting against the back of his head, locking him in place as she began wildly grinding herself against his mouth. He fought not to lose the rhythm of his tongue’s complex motion as her hips began rolling against his face faster and faster, her voice coming out in increasingly breathier pants and squeaks. 

Kurtz heard one final high-pitched squeak, like Jellybean had been abruptly hit in the stomach, before she keened his name in a pitchy whine. A moment later, her body started convulsing as the walls of her pussy spasmed against his tongue. He continued licking her until her full body spasms calmed down to intermittent twitches finally stopping when her hand dropped limply from the back of his head. Kneeling up, he drank in the sight of her: brown disheveled hair, sweater twisted up the barest glimpse of a ruby-colored bra peeking out under the rucked up hem, limbs splayed akimbo against his sheets, her underwear dangling uselessly off one ankle. 

“I can’t feel my legs,” he heard Jellybean’s muffled voice murmur followed a second later by “smug bastard” when she caught him grinning. 

He let out a genuine laugh and she cracked her eyes open a little wider to glare at him. Instead of the chastened reaction she expected, Kurtz grinned even wider as he said, “Careful, JB. If you keep sweet talking me, I’ll never let you out of my bed.” 

JB tried swatting at him, but her limbs refused to cooperate, so she settled for rolling her eyes as she dramatically sighed, “Promises, promises, Kurtz.” 

It didn’t take much of a weight shift to have him rapidly dropping forward, caging in her entire upper body with his arms, his mattress bouncing a little from the impact. The speed with which he changed positions took her by surprise and for several minutes she just gaped at him. With each passing second, she watched his eyes become hungrier until her own urge to reach up and kiss him became nearly overwhelming. Her hands were just beginning to rise up from the mattress when Kurtz closed the distance between them as he murmured half to himself, “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

In the space of a heartbeat, Jellybean wrapped her legs around his waist and flipped them over, capturing his lips in a bruising kiss. She pressed her chest against his, and he groaned, the sound reverberating along the inside of her mouth. As his hips started to grind against her exposed pussy, she could feel herself leaving a damp spot on the front of his pajama pants. The thought of marking him with her scent like that made her even wetter, and she ground herself harder against him. Kurtz groaned again as Jellybean mercilessly stimulated his already aching cock. 

She rocked her hips backward with an odd swooping motion, and the simultaneous hard and soft pressure against his dick almost undid him after all the fooling around they’d already done. Kurtz nipped her bottom lip sharply in warning, and it was her turn to moan into their kiss. Her hands coasted over his clothed chest making a determined beeline for the waistband of his soft flannel pants when he managed to tear his mouth away from hers to croak out, “Condom. Bedside table.” 

JB quickly scooched off his hips to dig around the small drawer giving him the opportunity to kick off his pants more quickly. Turning back to face him, she was holding a golden foil wrapper in between her fingers with a slightly dubious look on her face. He tried not to let his nervousness show on his face as she asked, “When did you buy these?”

“A while ago,” he answered honestly, hoping that she would at least think better of him for  _ not _ having a fresh full box in his drawer like he’d been planning to get her into bed from the minute he first contacted her. 

“You can tell,” she said casually flipping the packet around to look for the expiration date. “Good for another year!” she added with relief, and he silently crowed over fate being kind to him. 

Before she could open the wrapper though, her hands stalled as she caught sight of his impressive exposed cock. Even though it had been a while since he’d last slept with anyone, the sheer disbelief on Jellybean’s face was not an unfamiliar look. He could see her trying to work out the mechanics in her head while she continued to hold the temporarily forgotten prophylactic in her hand. Reaching out to her, he took the hand not holding the condom gently in his and slowly guided their fingers to his engorged red cock. He waited a minute to give her a chance to pull her hand back. When she didn’t, he carefully cupped his hand around her tentative fingers to show her she didn’t need to be afraid that he’d break off in her palm. 

There was a solid quarter inch gap between the tips of her fingers and her thumb when she wrapped her hand around his warm, pulsating cock. She squeezed her fingers without really processing the source of the undeniable weight in her hand causing Kurtz to let out a small hiss. JB was so enthralled by his newly revealed body part that she didn’t acknowledge his reaction beyond absently mouthing “Sorry.” Her free hand hesitantly reached out to touch his perfectly smooth balls. Outside of the porn she sometimes watched while Gracie provided MST-3K style commentary, she’d never seen a guy who manscaped let alone went hairless. It was definitely a positive difference. Rather than a gnarly nest of stanky crotch fuzz that she didn’t even want to look at let alone touch, she couldn’t bring herself to stop touching his surprisingly silky skin. 

Kurtz was going to die, ignominiously, covered in a pool of his own cum all because he didn’t have the willpower to tell the woman unwittingly teasing him to stop touching him. Unlike all of the other women he’d slept with, JB was taking her time as she fondled him, running the flat of her palm over his testicles slowly, letting her fingers graze delicately along his taint. That, combined with the comforting weight of her hand encasing his rock hard cock, made every inch of his body feel like she’d lit him on fire. 

“Jellybean,” he finally said, his voice wrecked.

The overwhelming need in his voice snapped her out of her daze. It took her a second, but she eventually spied where she’d dropped the condom wrapper in her shock. She was confident that she’d never taken one out and gotten it put on so quickly in her life. Right as she was about to swing her leg back across to properly straddle him, she looked him dead in his lust-blown eyes and offered seriously, “Still time to change your mind.” 

His hands flew to her waist with lightning fast quickness, the muscles in his arms visibly bulging under his long sleeve shirt as he hauled her into his lap. “ _ Fucking ride me already, Jellybean _ ,” he growled so fiercely the vibrations from his voice nearly made her cum again. 

She hovered over him on her knees, one hand wrapped firmly at the base of his cock to keep him lined up with her entrance, while she helped balance herself with one hand pressed up against his heart. Kurtz silently prayed that she wouldn’t notice how badly his heart was thundering against his ribs. Suddenly, he felt like his dick was being squeezed through a warm, wet vise, and he fought the urge to immediately cum. His eyes were naturally drawn to the pressure clamping down on him; he doubted he’d ever seen anything more erotic. Jellybean’s pussy was stretched wide as she sank further down on him with agonizing slowness. From his angle beneath her, he could just see the exposed hood of her clit as she’d rock gently forward to slide him deeper within herself. The image finally made him understand why all the poets he’d studied in grad school seemed to be obsessed with describing pussies as “blossoming roses” or “unfurling blooms.” 

JB had never been stuffed so full in her life. There were only about two-thirds of his cock inside her, but she already felt like she was on the verge of exploding from the pressure. Her eyes drifted to Kurtz’s face. His attention was completely glued to where she’d impaled herself on his cock. Unlike the smug looks she’d gotten from  _ significantly  _ less well-endowed men, his was a look of unbridled awe, as if he expected to wake up any minute only to find out she’d been a mirage. It made her feel incredibly sexy and empowered. 

Taking a deep relaxing breath, she sunk down the last few inches on his cock. 

Neither of them moved for several moments afterward, each processing the intense feeling of connection. Kurtz spoke up first in a surprisingly soft voice as he said, “Please, let me see you touch yourself.” 

Jellybean rocked her hips sharply backward caught off guard by his request, the sudden movement combined with the tightness of her pussy causing him to hiss with surprise. She felt her cheeks heat up as an embarrassed flush crept over her face—whether from accidentally hurting him or from being asked to let him watch her rub her clit, she wasn’t sure. The longer she straddled him, the more she realized the unbearable pressure in her cunt was beginning to ease up, and the more of an urge she had to ride him.

Leaning backward slowly, she changed the position of her hands so that she was bracing herself on his naked upper thigh with her left hand while her right toyed idly with her clit. Kurtz licked his lips slowly, and she was overcome by the unexpected eroticism of it. Her hips started rolling in an elliptical pattern, slowly picking up speed with every few rotations. As she bounced faster, her fingers began to lose the proper friction she so desperately craved against the hard nub between her thighs. Widening the cant of her hips, she stretched herself further against his straining dick, creating just enough extra tension on her clit to make up for the reduced sensation from her fingers. 

Kurtz didn’t initially give it much thought when he felt Jellybean’s fingers slide along the inside of his upper thigh as she leaned a little back against him, so transfixed was he by the sight of his cock penetrating her glistening rosy cunt over and over. He immediately took notice though when her fingers wrapped themselves back around his balls, pulling on them gently with every bounce of her hips. The small tugs weren’t painful in-and-of themselves; however, their increasing frequency was beginning to pull him toward the line where pleasure and pain exchange longing glances. She cupped him a little more firmly before she removed her hand only to give his testicles a couple playful swats. He immediately saw stars as his balls tightened, his building orgasm imminently approaching. 

A few seconds later, Kurtz let out a deep groan followed by a series of nearly inarticulate explictives as his hips began pistoning uncontrollably against her pussy. JB rubbed her fingers harshly over her clit, desperately trying to come for a third time before his cock slipped limply out of her tight channel. Just as she was on the verge of thinking her body simply didn’t have a third orgasm in it for one night, her fingers found the magical combination of correct pressure, angle, and friction needed to launch her into orgasmic oblivion one last time. 

Jellybean was still sporadically twitching as she drooped limply to the side before finally hitting Kurtz’s mattress with a dull  _ thud _ . She yawned widely, the irresistible urge to sleep eventually overtaking her as she felt Kurtz slip out of her. The last thing she remembered before she fell asleep was the sound of the used condom getting thrown in a waste basket. 

* * *

Kurtz awoke the next day to the feeling of being suffocated as Jellybean crawled wildly around his bed looking for something. 

He had barely moved his head to the side to open up an unobstructed airway when he heard her frantically demand, “Where’s your phone?” 

His brain was still stewing in the lingering effects of the previous night’s sex fog, which was why it took him longer to fully understand her question. The delay in his response time caused a mild flare of panic in her as she practically screeched at him, “Phone, Kurtz! I need it!” 

Kurtz reached under his pillow and pulled his iPhone out, unlocking it before he handed it over to her. Jellybean ripped the phone out of his hand so fast that his phone case gave him some mild rug burn. He watched in awe as her fingers flew across the screen to tap out a text message. 

When she handed his phone back a minute later, he waited for her to explain what just happened, only to be met with a mildly annoyed stare. Doubly confused by the situation, he asked, “What’s up?” 

“You owe me a pair of jeans,” she said pursing her lips tightly.

His eyebrows quirked in confusion. “You said you didn’t like them,” he replied.

Jellybean pinched the bridge of her nose as she shook her head. “I was… _ distracted _ ...when you asked me,” she said with a small pout. “Besides,  _ I still need to get home _ ,” she emphasized. He gave her a genuinely remorseful look at her reminder. In the heat of the moment, he hadn’t given any thought to the consequences of cutting off her clothes. Before he had a chance to apologize though, Jellybean said, “Maybe next time, make sure I have spare clothes at your house before you start destroying what I show up in.” Kurtz felt himself nod mutely as his brain struggled to make sense of what she meant by “next time.” 

She turned to walk out of his room, and he suddenly noticed the pants she  _ was _ wearing. “Those are my favorite pair of pajamas!” he said a little less indignantly than he would’ve liked under the circumstances. 

Jellybean slowly twirled around to face him, casually looking down at the black and grey flannel pants she was wearing. She ran her hands along her thighs, deliberately drawing his attention to where she’d so wantonly rubbed herself against him the night before. “Mmmm,” she purred, “I can understand why. They’re so.... _ soft _ .” Her fingers began idly playing with the loose drawstring on the pants, and Kurtz suddenly couldn’t remember why he’d been so bothered about her wearing them. 

He was still watching her--dumbstruck--when she gave him a small smile and began backing out of his room. Once she got to the doorway, she paused before saying, “These are mine until you replace my jeans.” 

Before he had a chance to respond, she was gone. 

A little while later as he was sitting drinking a cup of black coffee in his kitchen, he finally pulled his phone out to see whether she’d deleted the text message she’d sent earlier. He was surprised to find that not only had she  _ not _ deleted anything, she’d actually contacted two different people. Pulling up the more recent message, he laughed as he read ‘DON’T CALL MY DAD. PHONE DIED LAST NIGHT. #PICSORITDIDNTHAPPEN.’ Then he turned to the second unknown number she texted. As soon as his eyes scanned over the message, he knew who the second phone number belonged to, and his cock began to stiffen. She knew he’d eventually look at her messages--he was certain of it--because there was no other explanation for why she’d texted  _ herself _ from his phone to say ‘You owe me a pair of jeans. You can keep the underwear tho. 😘’ 

After quickly saving her number to his contacts, he went upstairs to get dressed in record time--he had to go jeans shopping.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos/reblogs/fic recs always appreciated!
> 
> Thank you again for reading!!!


End file.
